Goose Alert

Time for those honkers to move along

By Francis G. Slay

1 min read

Posted on 05.24.07

1 min read

Posted on 05.24.07

In response to my recent posts about the soon-to-be defunct doggy dining ban in outdoor cafes and patios, some of you took the opportunity to complain about the nasty habits of the Canada geese in Forest Park. Why should well-behaved dogs be banned from accompanying their owners to brunch, you complained, while wild geese misbehave without sanction?

Actually, Anabeth Weil, the top City staffer in Forest Park, has done pretty much everything she can think of to control the Park’s large, aggressive, non-migrating population of geese. This week, she will try dogs.

The Parks Department has enlisted two Border Collies, Maggie and Kadie, to encourage the geese to find another home by chasing them around the Park. (This form of goose control is non-lethal and is accepted as a humane way to deal with nuisance birds by most animal rights activist groups, including the Humane Society of America and PETA.)

Geese leave a lot of goose mess underfoot on patios and trails, and tend to shred the Park’s plants and flowers. If Maggie and Kadie can convince even a few geese to move back to Canada for a while, I will be buying their doggy lunch at the Boathouse myself.